Should have taken the left turn-- the story of my heavy days as an international smuggler of things less than legal - Chapters 4-6

Chapter 4
The boys are back in town

Nine O´clock rolled around, I sat at the bar having a drink. The boys arrived on the dot all decked out in their Friday night best. Typical American attire cigars in mouth, rapped in khaki slacks, polo shirts and what looked like new leather loafers. Thank Christ they dropped the Hawaiian shirts otherwise I wasn't going anywhere with them. I had a bit of a rep to think about.
“Looking snazzy boys”
“Are you going home to change?” Vegas asked
“Nope”
The well dressed gents looked me up and down. I was wearing a pair of old school Converse, shorts, black wife beater with my tattoos showing and my battered Yankees baseball cap. I looked like I was ready for the beach not a cocktail bar. I explained what I looked like didn’t matter. I was considered local because I worked in the town and everyone knew me. I downed my drink and we were off.
I took the boys on a booze fuelled voyage into the underbelly of the town where the locals go and party. After a few hours of trawling the bars and drinking way too much Vegas asked me to pick up some extra curricular activities. I looked at him shocked for about half a second, he told me to fuck off. Vegas said that every bartender he has ever met knew where to get the best party favours. This was true. I made a call, did the deal. We were back on the party wagon about twenty minutes later. There was not even one drunkard amongst our party once we powdered our respective noses. We walked down the strip all glass eyed and feeling important. Vegas declared he wanted to see fresh livestock. I looked to T bewildered thinking that was the strangest reaction from coke I’d ever heard. I really didn’t know where to find a cow at that hour of the night. T explained it was what Vegas called a group of women. That made more sense. I knew exactly where to find the afore mentioned bovine.
I frequented a little after hour’s bar with the guys from work. It was the sort of place Vegas could run off some of his newly found steam and we could run a muck and not get in trouble. The party favour guy owned it. It was a great little bar named Haven. It was lined with burgundy wallpaper. Gold framed pictures with famous drinkers adorned the walls. The music was pumping house, the atmosphere was electric and the air was filled with the scent of sex, smoke and debauchery. the perfect setting for late night drinking and getting into trouble with the female form.
Vegas did just that and took full advantage of the entirely half drunk and coked up women in the place. T and I sat at the bar and shouted at each other, the music was obnoxiously loud. Heber the proprietor and party favour guy noticed us trying to have a conversation. He interrupted our shouting match and motioned us to follow him. We followed and left Vegas to his own devises. I’ll say this a few time during this book: I make stupid decisions when I’ve been drinking. Leaving Vegas without supervision was one of those decisions. Fortunately there was a two-way mirror in the back room where we were headed. Heber had lovingly nicknamed it the dirty protest room. I kept an eye on Vegas while T made small talk with our gracious guest. He told Heber about what I did to Vegas during the day. shaking his head with a smile, Heber looked at me for a reason. I told him I had no choice he clicked his fingers at me. He laughed hard at my response . T said he had never seen someone put Vegas in his place like I did earlier, he was impressed. We turned our attention to the man in question for a while. It was like watching a 6’5 drunken train wreck. He hit on every woman with a short skirt and a pulse. I think the pulse was optional to be truthful. He didn’t care if half the women couldn’t even understand him or stand up.
“Does he ever let up” I asked T
“You kidding this is him on his best behaviour”
“He’s persistent I’ll give him that”
“Yep”
As we watched, the next event seemed to happen in slow motion. I think it had to do with the blend of booze and drugs or it was probably the strobe lights. One of the girls the train wreck was trying to chat up gave him one hell of a right hook and stormed off with her friend. I jumped up and went straight to him. I gave him a look and pulled him off the dance floor. We got back to the protest room in one piece. I sat back down. Vegas just stood there then turned to us, lit a cigar and shrugged
“Can’t win ‘em all”
I looked at him in astonishment and asked
“What the hell did you ask her?”
“If she and her daughter would like to have a golden shower back at my place”
“No fucking wonder she thumped you”
“Fuck that…she hit me because she was the younger of the two ... Women go figure”
Vegas smiled and went back out to the dance floor. T, Heber and I looked at each other stunned and started laughing. We stayed in the dirty protest room for the rest of the night drinking and doing party favours in between talking about life, music and work, Hell Vegas even came in and relaxed with us for a bit. He actually apologized for snapping his fingers at me. I apologized for making him spend nearly a grand on two cocktails.
T explained to us that he and Vegas owned an international concierge service. Basically if a client wants something and is willing to pay for it they get it for them. It sounded like an interesting business to be in. I told them about my life as a travelling bartender doing season to season in a different place, summer in the sun and winter in the snow. I told them I loved travelling. T asked if I would ever settle down. I thought about it and said when its time. He asked if work had much to do with it. I said that I could work anywhere. I told him I’d like to find a job that keeps me on my toes. I get bored easily. I was convinced I suffered from A.D.D. or some other abbreviations.
Around 1 am a couple of the waitresses from work showed up to get some drinks out of me. Vegas saved the dent in my wallet. He made the most of the situation by hitting on them with such renewed enthusiasm it was terrifying. He was like the Duracell bunny on crack. He kept going and going. I could only watch in horror at the amount of booze he poured into the girls. I swear I think Vegas thought his life depended on it to get laid that night. The girls on the other hand were having none of it. They did make the most of the free beverages though. There was some serious damage done to his credit card and our livers.
I knew for a fact that neither of the girls would sleep with him for all the booze in Spain and I didn’t want either girl getting alcohol poisoning. To put him out of his misery I thought I’d introduce him to a girl of a working nature I knew. I spotted her on the dance floor earlier. I told T what I was up to. I wanted to know if Vegas would hit the roof but he said with a mischievous smile
“No he is a devoted investor in girls of the working kind. Do you think he would get laid otherwise?”
“Point taken”
I grabbed the lovely Maria from the dance floor explained the situation as we made our way to the back room. I did my introductions with Vegas. The girls from work knew who she was but said nothing. They didn’t give a shit they were full to the eye balls with rum, coke and other things. They were having a good time. Vegas and Maria hit it off immediately. I would’ve been surprised if they didn’t. It was her job to show interest in drunken men for fuck sake. No one had the heart to tell Vegas the meter was running.
We finally left the bar at stupid o’clock, well ‘fell out of’ would describe it better. The sun was rising and you could hear the town waking. I hated the sound of the birds in the morning because it meant I only had a few hours till work and it was Saturday.
Vegas walked out with a smile only the Cheshire cat could duplicate. With Maria in arm he said goodnight to us all, T looked at me and said in a low tone
“At least we know he will be safe in bed with a hooker to keep him warm”
I chuckled to myself and also said my goodbyes to everyone. I strolled home with the day breaking behind me, a drink in my left hand and Sophie the waitresses on my right. Good times

The drugs don’t work

The next day was just wrong on so many levels. I hope you understand what I mean? If you don’t you’re lucky, it’s a ball ache of the highest degree. This is how it goes: You wake up in a complete haze with an hour’s sleep, no hot water when trying to have a shower but you do your best. Even though you’ve showered you still smell like a brewery pissed all over you. You try to wake the comatose waitress who is naked in your bed, but to no avail. She is supposed to work at the same time as you. Finally she wakes from her deep slumber in foul form. You proceed to get her showered and ready for work with four minutes left to get to your place of employment. This by the way is 20 minutes away. So when you get there you’re late. You’re still slightly drunk, you look like shit and feel like shit. Then you have to deal with the usual crew of miscreants and daily dramas that comes with the bar and its Saturday the busiest day of the week. When the booze finally leaves your system the midday sun hits, so does the mother of all hangovers in conjunction with a comedown. Even though you’ve had the hair of at least six dogs before 11 am your head still feel like there are 34 woodpeckers pecking at it all at once. To top it off the comatose waitress is highly disgruntled with you.
The waitress’s ungodly bad humour was my fault to some extent. Actually it was the full extent. The night before while we were ‘Rocking the Casbah’ as they say, I sort of fell asleep on top of the flexible yoga instructing Sophie. It was a delicate subject to say the least. I couldn’t help it I was hammered and exhausted so she was seriously pissed at me. This made work a hellish ordeal. Every time I tried to say anything to her she just called me an ass-hole..... Bad times
I had got through the day, just about. It finally started to quieten down a little after five. My head stopped thumping like Metallica were playing in it around the same time. T strolled up to the bar all fresh and happy, which I despised him for at that moment. He sat at the bar and gave me a big cheer filled.
“Morning”
“Morning it’s past 5 o’clock man”
“Well I just got up”
“I’ve been up since 8:30 this morning”
“But we left your friends bar at 5”
“Yep”
“Really...Sucks to be you”
“Cheers thanks for that”
“You’re welcome!”
“Where’s the partner in crime?”
“Gone”
“How’d he get on?”
“He said thanks for not telling him she was a hooker. He had no money when he got back to the hotel”
“So”
“He had to run out to an ATM to pay her which was half way down the street”
“So he enjoyed himself then”
“Yep he said thanks for the hospitality”
“Where’s he gone then?”
“Home, work to do”
“Nice some peace and quiet”
“Got that right”
“Why are you still here then?”
“I’m looking at a new investment and my wife arrives in 9 days”
“Nice”
I got T a drink and got back to work. It got busy again but we had little intermittent chats about mindless dribble and Vegas. We had a laugh at his expense again. It did me some good to chat to some one, just so I wouldn't fall over from exhaustion.
Once it got quieter, I took a break and sat down for the first time in 9 hours we started to chat about his work and some of the weirder requests he had to find and deliver. Like 4 grams of very expensive white Italian truffle worth $3000 a gram, for a certain whinny pop singer hosting a dinner party. I won’t say who but she is truly shit. She had to of fucked her way to a record deal. He said that was a reasonable request except he was in Montreal at the time and she was in LA.
I finished my smoke and got back behind the bar. Sophie came over to say hello to T. She gave him a big hug and thanked him for all the drinks from the night before and the monumental hangover. She looked me up and down and called me an ass-hole then walked away, T looked at me confused and I said
“Hell heath no fury…
I explained about the narcoleptic episode I’d suffered. He sat there listening then just looked at me in shock then across the bar at Sophie then back to me and burst out laughing asking me how I could ever fall asleep on that. Once he stopped and could look at me without giggling like a stupid school girl, he asked if I wanted to go out for a drink or dinner. I was told to bring Sophie to make up for the previous night. I thought it would be a bad idea. She would probably say yes, turn up at the restaurant, order hot soup then pour it over me so I thought I’d let her cool off for a couple of days and I said in the nicest possible way
“Not a fucking chance”
T found this highly amusing and said he was going to head back to the hotel in that case. He said he would see me tomorrow.
This is how it went for the next week or so, T would come to the bar during the day for a drink and a chat. Then leave to do some work or something for a few hours. He would return later when I would finish up. Sophie and I would go out with him for drinks or food some night’s, She finally calmed down by the way.
Over the course of the week I found out T was not American he was half Canadian and half Guyanese. His wife was Canadian they met in their final year of University. They both attended McGill. He told me how they met at a dorm party one night. It was a classic love story, he was shy, she was out going, he didn’t say a word and she could talk the hind legs of a donkey. They were sitting in a dorm room with mutual friends he passed her a joint, she looked at him. It was love at first toke. He graduated with flying colours and followed in his fathers foot steps and became an investment banker. After a few years of making everyone else money, T had enough. He wanted a change of pace and lifestyle. Vegas was one of his clients at the time. T proposed a business idea to him. He liked it. Vegas had the connections and T had the drive. The rest as they say is history. On our last night out before his wife arrived T and I went for food. We sat there talking he said he needed a favor
“I need a hand with a client tomorrow and some local knowledge would be helpful, I’ll pay you for your time of course, would you be interested?”
“It’s the first day off I've had in 2 weeks I've got to do laundry and shit, I’ll be busy till 2 then I’m free if that’s cool?”
“Great, perfect, could you dress well for it like a shirt and jeans and then after we can go out and you can meet my wife and it’ll be on me as a thank you for helping”
“Shirt and jeans not a problem”
I gave him my details. He said he’d pick me up the following day. We finished our food, sat and digested our meal with the help of a few alcoholic beverages. I slowly made my way home as I was still very full from dinner. I could hear my bed calling me. Thank Christ I slept that night. The following few days were like wearing a tutu while dancing in a bathtub listening to U2 on ecstasy. Yes it has been done and you know who you are.

Morning view

The next day T rolled up to my apartment in a brand new black soft top Porsche. I use the term “rolled” loosely he chugged and stalled more than anything. I heard him before I could see him. He explained he never learned how to drive stick. It took him nearly 30 minutes to get to my place, which should have taken 10. It was my job to drive. What a shame I’d have to drive the nice new Porsche, of all the bad luck.
T shifted over in the car and I jumped in the drivers seat like an over excited kid at Christmas. T looked at me, I’m sure he was wondering if he made a mistake asking me to drive. He soon found out. I got the directions and we were off. I took the coast road towards Malaga then the highway. I was driving fast, fast enough for my eyes to be pushed into the back of my head. T looked nervous. I thought he might have an accident. I slowed down. There’s nothing worse than showing up to a business meeting with damp patch on your crotch and the smell of urine, is there?
Once I was cruising at a respectable speed and T’s heart stopped thumping. He filled me in on his client. Her name was Rosa Valdez. She was an antiques broker who came from old Spanish money. She had connections everywhere. Her clients included European monarchy and fortune 500 bosses. Her nick name was the pit-bull. Once she wanted something, she wouldn’t let go till it was hers. A mutual friend recommended T and Vegas to her. I wondered why she needed T. It sounded as if she could get what ever she wanted herself with a simple phone call. I asked T and he said discretion is one of the key elements in his business.
Forty minutes later we arrived just outside Malaga. I was rather proud of myself I only got lost once. We pulled up to the gates, I looked at the villa and blurted out a big “fuck me” T started to chuckle. Actually villa would be the wrong word. Citadel would be a better description. The place was immense. I was convinced that Ms. Valdez used a golf cart and a passport to get from the kitchen to the bathroom. The large electronic gates opened in front of us. I slowly drove up the tree lined driveway to the front of the house. There was a standard looking robust security guard in black waiting at the front door. I parked off to the side, T got out and started walking towards the door he stopped and looked at me confused and said
“Why are you sitting in the car?”
“I thought I was your chauffeur?”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“Yeah”
“I don’t so get your ass over here!”
“Oh right… coming”